Imagine showing off your new car to friends and family only to get a call from the dealer — sometimes weeks later — saying your financing has fallen through.

You're given the option of returning the car or signing a new sales agreement with terms that are likely less favorable. If you're like many buyers, consumer lawyers say, you will be too embarrassed to send the car back and opt to pay more instead.

Consumer lawyers call this yo-yo financing, when dealers let buyers leave with a car and then reel them in again to say the agreement has changed. And Maryland regulators say it's just wrong.

"It's a major problem in our state and other states," says Karen Straughn, an assistant attorney general in Maryland.

Yo-yo financing is one of the issues being looked at by the Federal Trade Commission, which is holding meetings on auto financing with industry players and consumer advocates.

Auto dealers lobbied successfully last year not to come under the oversight of the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. They remain under the authority of the FTC, but Congress gave that agency the ability to write regulations for auto dealers much faster than before. The FTC says it is now gathering information to see if existing consumer protections are sufficient or if more needs to be done.

More is needed. Maryland, for example, protects car buyers against having a signed contract changed on them. But consumers are often unaware of these protections, regulators say, and dealers often don't follow them.

"It was an issue. That was a number of years ago," says Peter Kitzmiller, president of the Maryland Automobile Dealers Association.

But these practices largely have disappeared because consumers can shop on the Internet for financing and have a good idea of the loan terms they qualify for before they arrive at the dealership, Kitzmiller says. Also technology today lets dealers know quickly whether a customer will be approved for a loan so there aren't ugly surprises later.

When financing does fall through, Kitzmiller says, it's often because customers provided inaccurate information about their income or employment.

Ozell Carter of Temple Hills says he's one of them. He lost his car after two months because the dealer said the financing fell through. Carter is now suing.

In his lawsuit filed in April, Carter says he was offered a deal to buy a 2004 Mercury Sable for $10,175 in late October from Car Center in Waldorf. Carter signed a contract to pay $278 a month over 54 months. And a few days later got insurance and temporary tags for the car and drove off.

About a week later, according to the suit, a Car Center agent called Carter to tell him of a better deal at $235 a month over 5 years. Carter signed a new contract. Believing the car was his, he says, he sold his old auto.

But more than a month went by, and Carter hadn't received his payment book. He says the agent told him not to worry. On Dec. 23 with still no payment book, Carter went into the dealership to pay in person. That's when he was told that he didn't get financing.

Carter says he was told that to keep the car, he would now need a co-signer and his monthly payment would jump to $375 over three years. He couldn't find a co-signer and couldn't afford the higher payment. He returned the Mercury Sable on Christmas Day.

"It was devastating," says the 53-year-old. "I cried. I cried because it was a major setback."

Carter says without a car he missed work at his part-time job, and ended up renting a vehicle for a month.

Dan Moltz, general manager at Car Center, says he's unfamiliar with the details of Carter's case.